Ness
Ratings6
Average rating3.8
Somewhere on a salt-and-shingle island, inside a concrete-and-iron structure called The Green Chapel, a figure called The Armourer is leading a black mass. He plans to detonate a thermonuclear missile. But something is coming to stop him. Five more-than-human figures - or forms, or forces - are traversing the landscape, moving steadily towards a point where they will converge and become Ness. Ness is the land awakened. Ness is lichen skin and willow-bower bones, condensing mist, tidal drift and deep time. Ness has hagstones for eyes and Ness speaks only in birds, firecrests in the day and swifts after dusk. And Ness has come to take this island back.
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Interesting little interlude of a book. I think I'll enjoy mulling it over more than I did actually reading it. Not a bad trade, the book was short and time is long.
Strange and uncomfortable. A poetic juxtaposition between nature and mans folly, the power of time and the military industrial complex. I can appreciate what the book is trying to achieve and it certainly is unsettling. Not something I would read usually and I am glad for the change
I’ve never been to (Orford) Ness, but through this text, and the couple of Wikipedia searches I did to help me through it, I feel like In know the place; like I was there this morning as I read.
I don’t read poetry or fiction very often, but I do read natural history. Ness felt ‚adjacent’. A natural(!) next step. I’ll reread the descriptions of it, he, she, they, as many times I expect…
